50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2019, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here and the third one here.

How're you getting on so far?

Thanks for new thread Southeast. My list below. Really hoping that the bolding works as I pasting from my phone.

*1. The Salt Path - Raynor Winn

1. Everything Under - Daisy Johnson*
2. An almond for a parrot- Wray Delaney
3. Courage calls to courage everywhere- Jeanette Winterson
4. Admissions: A life in brain surgery- Henry Marsh

6. Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss

1. Snap - Belinda Bauer

8. Chronicle of Youth : Vera Brittain’s War Diary, 1913 - 17 - Vera Brittain

1. Transcription - Kate Atkinson**

10. Votes for Women - Jenni Murray 11. Henry VIII and the man who made him - Tracy Borman 12. The Woman in the Window - A J Finn 13. The Tudor Crown - Joanna Hickson 14. How to build a girl - Caitlin Moran 15. The silence of the girls - Pat Barker 16. The Song of Achilles- Madeleine Miller 17. A long way from home - Peter Carey 18. The Binding - Bridget Collins 19.The Glass Woman - Caroline Lea 20. Bodies of light - Sarah Moss 21. Scrublands- Chris Hammer 22. From a low and quiet Sea - Donal Ryan 23. Bookworm . A memoir of childhood reading - Lucy Mangan 24. The Casual Vacancy- J K Rowling 25. Is there anything you want? - Margaret Forster 26. The lion the witch and the wardrobe- C S Lewis 27. The daughter of time - Josephine Tey 28. All that remains: A life in death - Sue Black 29. London lies beneath - Stella Duffy 30. Old baggage - Lissa Evans 31. Crooked Heart - Lissa Evans** 32. The five - The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper - Hallie Rubenhold 33. After the party- Cressida Connolly 34. The Hidden - Mary Chamberlain 35. The Queen and I - Sue Townsend 36. The lost words - Robert Macfarlane 37. Abide with me - Elizabeth Strout 38. Parliament of rooks : Haunting Bronte Country - Karen Perkins

The last book Parliament of Rooks was awful it became hilarious. I cursed my inability to abandon a book but thought of writing the review on her kept me going. This is a story set across 2 time periods in Haworth; one modern day and the other mid 1800's, the time of the Bronte's.
Verity Earnshaw (should have run away at this point) is escaping her divorce and setting up a guest house in the old weavers cottages in Haworth. Supporting her are two friends whose capacity to drink wine is well documented. Every page is dominated by them glugging the Pinot. Of course the house is haunted by not just one but 3 ghosts, including Emily Bronte! There is no suspense, no build up, no subtlety and no one is remotely skeptical. There are immediate light orbs dancing, dogs behaving strangely, grey ladies walking through walls. There are a ridiculous number of ghosts and a ridiculous attempt to shoehorn in the author's 'knowledge'; the Pendle witches are mentioned too.
The writing is awful, the dialogue is so comically and stereotypically 'Yorkshire' without being any where near authentic it is painful. Which is a shame because 70% of the book at least is written in dialogue.
The characters are one dimensional and unbelievable. For example the 11 year old daughter of a friend naps in the afternoon, curls up for a nap in the afternoon and regularly colours quietly in a corner while the friends drink yet more wine and try to exorcise the house! If I suggested colouring and nap to my 11 year old daughter... Characters are added for no good reasons.
The historical element is no better. There is much focus on how unsanitary Haworth was and the high death rate. Which is well documented, however Perkins portrays the villagers as blasé about death. A scene with two woman laying out a young boy, the son of one, is cold. The woman exchange idle gossip as they go; if it was modern day I suspect she would have them reaching for yet another chilled white wine!
There are also historical inaccuracies - Charlotte Bronte did not die in childbirth as claimed here. At the time it was suspected Consumption but now biographies think it could have been severe morning sickness. Two minutes googling brings you this answer - I checked- more lazy writing.
And add in characters being possessed, a ridiculous ending and not one but three improbable 'happy endings', this is hands down the worse book I have read probably since The Keeper of Lost things.
A quick look at Amazon and Goodreads though tells me I am definitely in the minority, five stars abound here! So what do I know?
Bronte fans avoid like the plague!!

Realised I didn’t copy my list over before,

1. Tied up in Tinsel - Ngaio Marsh
2. Nine Lessons - Nicola Upson
3. Bookworm - A memoir of childhood reading - Lucy Mangan
4. A History of Britain in 21 Women - Jenni Murray
5. The Mystery of Three Quarters (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries #3))

by Sophie Hannah

1. Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee
2. Mythos - Stephen Fry
3. The Bear and The Nightingale - Katherine Arden
4. Heroes - Stephen Fry

10. Don’t you forget about me - Mhairi McFarlane 11. Amy and Isabelle - Elizabeth Strout 12. Lethal White - Robert Galbraith 13. Parsnips, Buttered: How to baffle, bamboozle and boycott your way through modern life. - Joe Lycett 14. Swing Time - Zadie Smith 15. Born a Crime - Trevor Noah 16. The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry

toomuchsplother well I’m glad you read it, enjoyed that review. The thing about the blase attitude to death reminds me of the first chapters of a Town Like Alice - which I enjoyed on the whole btw - when a woman’s children die and she is stoic about it, then when she gets weak dry-eyed hands her remaining toddler to another woman saying something like “oh well he’ll probably be better off with you now anyway”. I mean can you imagine?

Thank you South!

Five, have you seen the film of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Iirc it has Johnny Depp and Leo DiCaprio, and was good. I’ve never read the book but might do now!

Thanks as ever South for the new thread.

My rather modest list, highlights in bold

1. Winter by Ali Smith
2. Help the Witch by Tom Cox

3. The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell 4. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

1. The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn

6. The Long Shadow by Celia Fremlin

1. The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman.
2. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

8.Warlight by Michael Ondaatje 10. The Ghost by Robert Harris 11. A Month in the Country by JL Carr

41. We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai Malala has collected stories from girls and young women who are refugees from various situations around the world. Some are quite harrowing and heartbreaking to read. However the one thing that binds them together is hope for the future. Some are working on simply surviving in their new locations but others have such passion and positivity that they will go on to change the world. A very moving collection that will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you for the new thread. Here is my list so far

1 Family History by Vita Sackville West
2 The Aspern Papers by Henry James
3 To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
4 A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
5 The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
6 The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka
7 Third Girl by Agatha Christie
8 All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West
9 Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
10 NW by Zadie Smith
11 Tono Bungay by H G Wells
12 Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
13 The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively
14 The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
15 Akenfield by Ronald Blythe
16 Craven House by Patrick Hamilton
17 A Fool's Alphabet by Sebastian Faulks
18 Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrick Backman

19 Grand Canyon by Vita Sackville West
This book had a great premise but didn't like how it developed. She wrote it in 1942, so in the middle of World War 2. She imagines a world where Germany has won using some weaponry which gave them supremacy. It is set at a hotel by the Grand Canyon, near where there is a big US military base. It follows some of the inhabitants of the hotel, in particular two British guests who have escaped from their homeland which is a satellite of Germany. Like her other books a fair amount of it is people's thoughts - there are long imagined conversations. There is some good writing - she is very powerful on the devastation of war, the way everything can be so quickly destroyed. Overall I found it strange. It is in two parts and the second part is odd - I can't say more without giving away the plot.

20 England England by Julian Barnes
A wealthy businessman buys up the Isle of Wight and turns it into a theme park version of England - more real than the real thing. Enjoyable read. Barnes wrote this in the late 1990s and towards the end there is a sentence about England which seems to predict our current national predicament: "They extracted the country from the European Union - negotiating with such obstinate irrationality that they were eventually paid to depart" Perhaps this has been our strategy all along!

Thanks for the new thread. List below - no horrors; I think I am becoming much more selective about what I read. Still working my way through Infinite Jest, and am behind on book three of Dance to the Music of Time but plan on some intensive reading this weekend.

1 Severance by Ling Ma
2 China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
3 Conundrum by Jan Morris
4 I'll Be There For You by Kelsey Miller
5 A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins
6 The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell
7 Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
8 To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine
9 The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford
10 Get Out Of My Life But First Take Me And Alex Into Town by Tony Wolf and Suzanne Franks
11 The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
12 The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor
13 I Find That Offensive by Claire Fox
14 My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul
15 Becoming by Michelle Obama
16 Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
17 Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy by Tim Harford
18 The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
19 The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
20 The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfield
21 Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
22 Middle England by Jonathan Coe
23 Harriet by Jilly Cooper
24 Under the Glacier by Haldor Laxness
25 A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
26 A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell
27 The Bible For Grownups by Simon Loveday
28 Neuromancer by William Gibson
29 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
30 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
31 The Door by Magda Szabó
32 Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
33 L’Assomoir by Emile Zola
34 If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino
35 The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
36 The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
37 Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
38 Five Giants by Nicholas Timmins

Many thanks for the new thread, southeast

My list so far:

1. The West Pier - Patrick Hamilton

2: The Last Resort - Pamela Hansford Johnson 3: The Child That Books Built - Francis Spufford 4: Dark Sacred Night - Michael Connelly 5: American Bloomsbury - Susan Cheever 6: A Party in San Niccolò - Christobel Kent

1. Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary - Ruby Ferguson
2. The Dark Room at Longwood - Jean-Paul Kauffmann
3. Brother of the More Famous Jack - Barbara Trapido

10: Barrow's Boys - Fergus Fleming 11. The Harpole Report - J. L. Carr 12. Their Finest Hour and a Half - Lissa Evans 13: Leadon Hill - Richmal Crompton 14: Deep South - Paul Theroux 15: A Ghost at the Table - Suzanne Berne 16: A Girl in Winter - Philip Larkin 17: An Unsuitable Attachment - Barbara Pym 18: After the Crash - Michel Bussi 19: Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood - Karina Longworth

I've fallen horribly behind because Brexit has drained me and I can't stop compulsively checking the news - I was hoping to read 100 books this year and my target for March is already trashed. But I've almost finished my next one so I'm hoping I make up some time once this horror phase is over (if it ever is).

Terpsichore I'm in the same boat as you - about 4 books behind where I should be according to Goodreads.

45. Very British Problems - a funny book by Rob Temple; short and undemanding but with some laugh out loud moments. Perfect if you are behind on the number of books you want to read in a month/year

So far I have read 14 books, and I'll have another finished by the end of the month. I calculated that this meant I was On Track, but now I look at the list, there were a few easy pickings at the start, so maybe not!

My list is

1 Past Tense, Lee Child
2 Micromastery, Robert Twigger
3 The Legend of Sally Jones, Jacob Wengellus
4 Righteous, Joe Ide
5 This Bloody Mary is the Last thing I Own, Jonathan Rendall
6 The Seige of Krishnapur JG Farrell
7 Now We Shall Be Completely Free, Andrew Miller
8 The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu
9 We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
10 Troubles, J G Farrell
11 All That Remains, Sue Black
12 Brothers-in-Law, Henry Cecil
13 The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin
14 The Year of Reading Dangerously, Andy Miller

Lovers of the Backlisted podcast will see that I've read Andy's book now - I'm reflecting a lot on how we all choose what we read and what it is that I want to read at the moment.

But Brizzle you're already on more than double my total

Anyway, I've just got a shift on and finished the last few pages of:

20: Murder by the Book - Claire Harman

In 1840 an elderly nobleman, Lord William Russell, was found by his valet, lying dead in his bed in his Mayfair house with his throat cut. Panic ensued...until, days later, that same valet, a young Swiss called François Courvoisier, was arrested for the murder. Much moral soul-searching pointed the finger at sensationalist literature and specifically st so-called 'Newgate novels', the arch-example being WH Ainsworth's 'Jack Sheppard' - which Courvoisier had read, and also seen in its stage version. Dickens and Thackeray both get a good look-in here too.

Harman has written very enjoyable biographies of Charlotte Bronte, Fanny Burnley and Sylvia Townsend Warner, and branches out with this into 'historical true crime' - though I think this is perhaps a slighter book just because there's less to work with.

Nevertheless, it tackles interesting aspects of early Victorian social history and unearths some facts I didn't know....such as that one member of the public, a doctor, wrote to the police advising them to check the bloody fingerprints at the scene because they would be unique to the killer - a completely unknown concept at the time, and one they duly ignored. His letter was filed, though, and years later when someone unearthed it, this finally marked the start of fingerprinting as a method of identification.

But Brizzle you're already on more than double my total grin

Such is the life of an insomniac

Thank you for the new thread Southeast
My list so far this year...

1. A Spell of Winter – Helen Dunmore
2. Timon of Athens – William Shakespeare
3. The Water Cure - Sophie Mackintosh
4. My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Otessa Moshfegh
5. The Sun and Her Flowers – Rupi Kaur
6. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
7. The Blackwater Lightship – Colm Toibin
8. Florida Lauren Groff
9. A Death in the Family – Karl Ove Knausgaard
10. At Last – Edward St Aubyn
11. Less – Andrew Sean Greer
12. Tell the Wolves I’m Home – Carol Rifka Brunt
13. Tomorrow – Elizabeth Taylor
14. Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
15. From the Land of the Moon – Milena Agus
16. The Nature of Winter – Jim Crumley
17. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks and Me – Bill Hayes
18. Bookworm – Lucy Mangan
19. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
20. Between the World and Me – Ta-Hehisi Coates
21. The Lucky Ones – Julia Pachico
22. Last Bus to Woodstock – Colin Dexter
23. Wolf Winter – Cecelia Ekback
24. From a Low and Quiet Sea – Donal Ryan
25. Visitation – Jenny Erpenbeck
26. Waiting for the Last Bus – Richard Holloway
27. An Isolated Incident – Emily Maguire
28. The Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare
29. Darling Days: A Memoir – io Tillett-Wright
30. Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones

Currently ploughing through Friday Night Lights - a journalistic study about the importance of high school football in Texas (this book inspired the TV series of the same name which I loved) and my March wolf book which is History of Wolves. Will get there eventually when I stop wasting my time on Gilmore Girls

Thanks for the new thread southeast. Here's my list:
1. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
3. Slade House by David Mitchell
4. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
5. Spies by Michael Frayn
6. Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land
7. Personal by Lee Child
8. The Five Giants by Nicholas Timmins
9. Mindful Thoughts for Walkers: Footnotes on the Zen Path by Adam Ford
10. Burning Bright by Helen Dunmore
11. Double Vision by Tricia Sullivan
12. The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths (Ruth Galloway #9)
13. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
14. Energise You by Oliver Gray
15. Worth Dying For by Lee Child

15. Worth Dying For by Lee Child I've now read roughly half of the Jack Reacher books and this was my least favourite by far. The Reacher in this book is less cerebral, seems to enjoy violence, rather than deploying it sparingly and with justice, and is cocky rather than confident. Too many hard men, too many descriptions of cars and guns. It's like Lee Child delegated this one to a teenage boy.

Thank you for the new thread Southeast. I've reached a bit of a lull. I don't want to read anything on my tbr shelf and started a book recommended by someone on a MN thread, the first in the Anita Blake series by Laurel K Hamilton. I love a bit of urban fantasy, but it is truly pants!

1. Queen of Shadows - Sarah J Maas 2. The Panopticon - Jenni Fagan 3. Empire of storms - Sarah J Maas 4. Tower of Glass 5. The Power - Naomi Alderman 6. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill 7. Catriona Macpherson - A Step so grave 8. The Mangle Street Murders - MRC Kasasian 9. Diamond Fire - Ilona Andrews 10. Sourdough - Robin Sloan 11. Omens - Kelley Armstrong 12. Visions - Kelley Armstrong 13. Anna Burns - Milkman 14. Sometimes I lie 15. Watcher in the Woods - Kelley Armstrong 16. The Wife Between Us - Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen 17. Side Jobs - Jim Butcher 18. Betrayal - Kelley Armstrong 19. The furthest station - Ben Aaronovitch 20. Penhallow - Georgette Heyer 21. The Nonesuch - Georgette Heyer

Many thanks for the new thread southeast and all the fantastic reading opportunities it brings with it

Here's my list... which (as always) pales into insignificance beside most of your lists. I literally don't think I could squeeze any more reading into my week though so I'm pretty pleased with my progress so far!

1. Featherboy – Nicky Singer

1. Three Cups of tea - Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

3. Bookworm: A memoir of childhood reading – Lucy Mangan 4. Leap In – Alexandra Heminsly 5. Half of a yellow sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

1. Fasting & Feasting – Anita Desai
2. The Millstone – Margaret Drabble

8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare

1. After You – Jojo Moyes

10. The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver 11. Normal People – Sally Rooney

Currently reading Becoming by Michelle Obama and really enjoying it.

Tanaqui i think so but it would have been many years ago

Thanks for the new thread south! Totally missed the last one as Brexit + work-stuff-caused-by-Brexit + general hormonal depression has not been great for my reading. So I spent March on easy comedian's autobiographies and then an Agatha Christie (for the first time in years - inspired by recent article in the LRB trying to reclaim her as a modernist) and am currently absorbed in lots of stuff about Waterloo, since I spent last weekend visiting the battlefield and museums.

However, am hoping to get back on some 'proper' books for April and inspired by some of your reviews.

1 - An Infamous Army - Georgette Heyer
2 - Zero Zero Zero - Roberto Saviano
3 - Milkman - Anna Burns
4 - The Bounty - Caroline Alexander
5 - The Sleep of Reason - David James Smith
6 - Moby Dick - Herman Melville
7 - Mike at Wrykyn - P.G.Wodehouse
8 - At Freddie’s - Penelope Fitzgerald
9 - Winter - Ali Smith
10 - Village of Secrets - Caroline Moorhead
11 - Back Story - David Mitchell
12 - Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe
13 - How not to be a Boy - Robert Webb
14 - Waterloo - Victor Hugo
15 - A Murder is Announced - Agatha Christie
In progress - Witnessing Waterloo - David Crane

Pleased you enjoyed it Satsuki!

Thank you for the new thread southeast.

Here's my list and some updates. I'm a couple of books behind but hoping to catch up soon.

1. Diary of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell

1. Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connolly
2. Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward

4. Transcription, by Kate Atkinson

1. Reading Allowed, by Chris Paling

6. The Art Of Gathering; How We Meet and Why It Matters, by Priya Parker This was entertaining and useful for anyone that has to organize meetings, workshops or events. Parker is a professional facilitator, working with global clients including private companies and diplomats working on peacekeeping missions. She clearly knows her stuff and talks about how to organise events more thoughtfully so that it's not just another boring conference or meeting that everyone grits their teeth to get through. Not sure how much of this I'll put into practice but it was thought provoking.

7. The Great Deluge, by Douglas Brinkley The reason I'm behind. This is brilliant but depressing - 600 small print pages about Hurricane Katrina. It's a modern history, using hundreds of different sources to describe the seven days before, during and after Katrina hit the southern Gulf Coast of the US in 2005. In places it reads like a thriller or memoir but it's quite distressing, particularly describing how this event was inevitable and yet so badly planned for. I had to keep putting it down and doing other things, but still heartily recommend if this is a subject that interests you.

8. Hollywood's Eve, by Lili Anolik A quick and fascinating read - this is the biography of Eve Babitz, a Hollywood girl from an artistic family (her godfather was Stravinsky) who spent some of her teens and twenties as a groupie and artist before becoming a writer. Anolik became obsessed with her and profiled her for Vanity Fair, leading to her books being rediscovered and reissued. The gossip and name-dropping throughout is extraordinary - Jim Morrison, The Beatles, Joan Didion - and the style is very lush and breathless, not at all a 'usual' biography. I think I'm going to have to seek out at least one of Eve's books to see the other side of the story.

9. The New Iberia Blues, by James Lee Burke The 22nd in the Dave Robicheaux detective series. I had read some of these many years ago and picked this one up at the library - Robicheaux is a great character and the descriptions of Louisiana and the South and sense of place are wonderful, but the descriptions and sheer number of murders in this were too gritty and upsetting for me. I think that may be why I gave up on the series before so I probably won't be returning to them. Very well done though, for people who have stronger stomachs than me.

Thanks for the new thread South. This is also the first time I have stayed on the thread to the fourth instalment FiveGoMad!

My paltry list so far, thankfully no stinkers:

1. Fire and Blood: A History of the Targaryen Kings from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III as scribed by Archmaester Gyldayn – George RR Martin
2. The Book of Death – Anonymous
3. Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
4. Marilyn Monroe: A Life from Beginning to End – Hourly History
5. Whispers Underground – Ben Aaronovitch
6. All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot
7. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne

@BakewellTarts
How are you enjoying The Blade Itself ? I love Joe Abercrombie's books and I am a little envious that you get to experience the 'First Law' books for the first time. Please read Before They are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings afterwards to wrap up the characters stories. Despite him being an evil twisted torturer (literally), I luffs Glokta!

25 Europe in Winter by Dave Hutchinson
Continuing my re-read of the Fractured Europe series of SFF thrillers. It's very hard to review these without giving massive spoilers for the previous books in the series, but this one is as readable and gripping as the others.

Even with the re-read & knowing what's coming, I'm still not entirely sure I've nailed down exactly what is happening when (and I think I also picked up a rather substantial plot hole in book 2), but it's such an enjoyable ride it doesn't really matter.